‘Oh,’ said the Tenth Doctor, ‘I’m sorry. Also, that’s my theory gone out the window. I wondered if they’d want her alive. Hence them going after your Madam Ikalla.’
Gelsin shook his head. ‘You do not understand,’ he said. ‘They have taken something more important.’
‘Wait! I know what it is,’ the Eighth Doctor was aghast. ‘These Coffin Ships – they’re designed as transport for your masters.’
The Bloodsmen took a step back and bowed their heads.
Brian realised what they meant. How utterly fascinating.
‘Oh, no.’ The Tenth Doctor stared at the undead, comprehending. ‘Oh, no, no, no.’
‘You are correct,’ their leader admitted. ‘One was on board. The Daleks have captured a Great Vampire.’
Chapter Ten
The Dalek saucer glided through space towards its destination. Scout ships came and went on missions. A number of Daleks hovered around the ship’s hull, carrying out maintenance tasks and surveilling for any approaching threats.
One Drone detected a small blip halfway between an energy signal and a rippling shadow at the far edge of its vision. The blip lasted barely 0.3 of a Rel. The Drone rechecked the space, and then marked its vision as impaired and logged itself in for a repair.
The blip manifested inside the cell the Eighth Doctor had been assigned aboard the saucer, and resolved itself into four people hovering just above the Doctor’s blanket.
The Tenth Doctor blinked in surprise. ‘That … worked?’
‘I would not have expected anything less,’ oozed Brian loyally.
Trying not to wrinkle his nose, the Eighth Doctor modestly explained it had been easy enough to link the Tenth Doctor’s TARDIS base code into the Bloodsmen’s personal apparators, homing in on his own TARDIS.
Gelsin did not speak, looking around with rapt concentration. ‘She is here,’ he breathed. ‘The Great One. She awaits us.’
On board the Ninth Doctor’s TARDIS, the Doctor was hurling himself around the chamber. Madam Ikalla placed her hands on the rough coral of the controls, feeling the life beating far inside them. ‘This ship sustains you and you sustain it,’ she said, and almost smiled. ‘It is a different kind of life to that which I know.’
‘Vampire friendships must be weird,’ the Doctor said.
‘Friendships?’ Madam Ikalla frowned.
‘Ah.’ The Doctor rubbed at the back of his head as his mind went fishing for the words. ‘A relationship where two people help each other for no other goal than they enjoy their company.’
‘Like you and your plant?’
‘Well, it’s not the best example. For all we know, Hector may hate me.’
‘Fascinating.’
The Doctor, having shaken some thoughts from his head, found a new one. ‘Did the Kotturuh upset you?’
‘Me?’ Madam Ikalla took the suggestion as though being asked if she’d been upset by a cockroach.
‘The Kotturuh seemed repelled by you.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We are anathema to them. We both value life. We feed off it, they judge it. I believe we make more use of other species than they do.’
‘Personal preference.’ The Doctor chewed at his lip. ‘But it shows there’s more than one approach to the universe. That’s the other good thing about a friend, you can bounce ideas off them.’
‘Like you are doing with me?’
‘Um, yeah.’
‘I see. And where is this leading you?
‘Something the Kotturuh said. A planet. Birinji, where their mission began.’ He joined her at the console, flicking switches and carefully nudging levers. ‘It was telling me something.’ He punched a small button and a bell rang. He leaned against the console, grinning at Madam Ikalla. ‘I like to feel the life inside her too. Especially at moments like this.’ He threw a lever and the TARDIS plunged like an escaping elevator. ‘To Birinji!’
Gelsin the Bloodsman stood in the middle of a corridor, sniffing the air.
‘What are you doing?’ hissed both Doctors simultaneously from the shadows.
A Dalek was approaching. Within moments it would come round the curve of the corridor and see the Bloodsman. Yet he remained rooted to the spot.
The Dalek glided nearer. ‘Do you think he’s OK?’ mouthed the Tenth Doctor.
‘I really don’t know,’ murmured the Eighth.
Realising action was needed, Brian went to fetch the undead soldier back. Gelsin tried to shake him off, but the Ood pulled him away and behind a support strut. From their place behind another strut, the Doctors watched the Dalek Drone slide past. Its eyestalk swivelled around, trying to locate something. It turned, curious, and then glided past their hiding place.
It paused. The Eighth Doctor was uncomfortably aware that he could hear four hearts beating. The moment held, and then the Dalek moved away. The Tenth Doctor let out a breath very slowly.
The spider plant was, if this were possible, looking worse than ever. Ikalla had a sinking feeling they’d both been watering the thing. Could you kill something by loving it too much? The answer to that was beyond anything in her experience. She looked across at the Doctor, who was busy with the sensors.
‘Birinji. There’s nothing there. Not a flicker of anything that would pass for life …’ He screwed up his face. ‘I think we’re too late to save anything.’
‘You’re not looking hard enough. There has to be something,’ Ikalla said.
‘Well, there’s nothing showing on the sensors. So let’s take a closer look, shall we?’
He began to pull levers and push buttons. Something deep inside the TARDIS wheezed and clanked and groaned. Ikalla had come to recognise this series of actions and noises as ‘TARDIS landing’ and not ‘imminent pain’. Nevertheless, she gripped the console with one hand, and held the plant pot steady with the other.
Thump. Crunch. Thud.
They were down. The Doctor tapped a screen in front of him. A flickering image appeared. ‘Ugh,’ he said. ‘Looks ’orrible out there.’
On the screen appeared a dead land, drenched in murk, empty of anything good.
He twiddled a few dials. They saw some green dots appear on the screen. ‘Biodome.’
‘I said there had to be something,’ Ikalla said simply.
The Doctor grinned. ‘So you did. Tell you what, let’s try and land inside. I don’t fancy the walk.’
Ikalla kept tight hold. The Doctor, fiddling again with controls, muttered something which might or might not have been, ‘I hope this works …’
Lurch. Thump. Crunch.
Thud.
‘Look at this!’ The Doctor turned the screen round so Ikalla could see.
Green. She saw green.
‘A garden!’
‘Or a jungle. With wild beasts.’
‘Thanks for that. Shall we go and see?’
She nodded, and he grinned. He loved all this: she could see that. He seemed always to notice the good, she thought. Perhaps that was how he did it. He noticed what was good and patched that all together so that everything somehow made sense. He didn’t let the bad things become the whole truth. It was, she considered, a fascinating, if stupid, viewpoint.
The TARDIS doors opened. There was a whoosh of warm air. The Doctor picked up the spider plant.
‘Why are you bringing that?’
‘Garden.’ The Doctor was sheepish. ‘Thought Hector might like to visit family. You coming?’
Ikalla nodded, and together they stepped out into paradise.
‘We must open the door,’ said Gelsin the Bloodsman. ‘I can feel her pain and her anger …’
‘Give us a minute …’ muttered the Tenth Doctor.
‘If you could hurry,’ said Brian. ‘Another Dalek is coming.’
The Eighth and Tenth Doctors looked at each, looked around, and said, ‘Ventilation shaft!’ like it was an old friend. They left the door and began to work away at a hatch leading into some ducting. It was not, they insisted, an
escape. It was a tactical retreat. Gelsin continued to stare raptly at the locked door.
The Dalek coming their way could not yet be seen but could certainly be heard, clanking loudly. Brian tilted his head to one side. ‘Mr Ball wonders if you can hurry.’
‘We’re using two sonic screwdrivers, it should be easier, but –’ the Tenth Doctor grunted, ‘Daleks do up bolts really tightly.’
‘How?’ asked the Eighth Doctor.
‘Is this really the best time?’
‘No, but how?’
The hatch finally came off, and, courteously, the Doctors indicated that Brian and the Bloodsman go into the duct first. Then they dived in afterwards, snatching up the grille after them and holding it in place with their bare hands.
As the Dalek glided closer, Brian cleared his throat. ‘Is that not very heavy?’
‘Surprisingly,’ muttered the Tenth Doctor through gritted teeth.
The Dalek passed the ventilation duct slowly.
‘Dalek Strategist,’ mouthed the Eighth Doctor.
The Tenth Doctor nodded. Fascinating that the Dalek Emperor’s closest adviser was trusted with this mission. Now we know who’s really running the show on this Dalek Ship.
As though it could sense his thoughts, the Strategist paused. Its ancient casing had bumped against something.
The Eighth Doctor stared at the floor where a bolt from the grille was lying. That was what the Strategist had bumped against. In his experience, Daleks were very good at putting two and two together and making Kill.
The Strategist’s eyestalk settled on the bolt, and remained where it was, cogitating. Dismissing the thought, it moved away, keyed open the secure door and glided through. The door closed behind it, stuck, then slid open again and froze.
The space beyond the door was dark and only a dim red light pulsed beyond it.
The Eighth and Tenth Doctors turned to each other.
‘Handy.’
‘Very handy.’
The grille was lowered gently to the floor. The Tenth Doctor and Gelsin slipped out. The Eighth Doctor and Brian remained crouched inside the ducting.
‘We’ll go through first,’ whispered the Tenth Doctor. ‘If it’s safe, follow.’
The two of them crept forward until they reached the threshold of the door.
‘The Great One is in there,’ breathed the Bloodsman.
‘Hmm,’ the Tenth Doctor murmured. Something had caught his eye.
The loud scream of a vast beast in agony rent the air.
Gelsin advanced into the darkness. The Doctor followed. As he went, his foot caught the bolt that had somehow been blocking the door’s sensor, and it slammed shut.
Plunged into darkness, the smell suddenly overwhelmed the Tenth Doctor, the pungent reek of terror and pain. This was an abattoir … He reached out, and grabbed hold of Gelsin. ‘Stand still,’ he hissed. ‘Please.’
‘Why?’ the Bloodsman tried to shrug him off. ‘The Great One is in pain.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the Tenth Doctor agreed. ‘But that’s not all. Remember – you’re free of them. They’re no longer your masters.’
‘It is instinct,’ hissed the Bloodsman. ‘I can only answer the call.’
‘Give me a second,’ the Tenth Doctor pleaded. ‘My head is spinning …’
Something had been nagging him. He risked a deep breath of the foetid air and contemplated his surroundings.
That was it. There was an echo to the usual ominous throb of Dalek equipment. Another vast heartbeat was laid over it.
Another vast scream echoed down the corridor.
Everywhere Madam Ikalla looked inside the biodome she saw life. Abundant, teeming, vibrant life. So many different shades of green that she doubted there were enough words in any language to capture the nuances and complexity. She reached out to touch the large, low-hanging leaves of a vast tree. Soft as velvet. Flowers, of many different types and colours. Red spikes. Huge yellow petals. Delicate violet blooms upon the ground. The colour, and the warmth, and the scents. Accustomed to a gloomy world of burgundy shades, it was overwhelming …
‘This,’ said Ikalla. ‘This is … beautiful.’
The Ninth Doctor smiled at her. ‘We’ll make a poet of you yet.’
They went out of the garden into a quiet corridor, following this to the end. The door at the far end opened into a small and outrageously untidy laboratory. At one end, sitting in a huge chair that fanned out behind her head, sat a creature wrapped in a vast and glittering cowl.
The Doctor sucked in a breath.
‘What’s the matter, Doctor?’
‘She’s Kotturuh …’
They drew closer. The being’s crystalline eyes flickered open behind the cowl, flashing with intelligence. ‘Ah, little ones,’ her voice chimed as she peered at them. ‘I wondered when you were coming.’ Her tentacles twitched, possibly in greeting, possibly in supplication. ‘How fitting. A vampire and a killer.’
The Doctor’s face creased into a frown. ‘You what?’
‘She thinks we’re assassins,’ Madam Ikalla said haughtily.
‘Wait a moment!’ The Ninth Doctor’s indignation overrode his logic. ‘I’m no killer.’
‘Indeed?’ the Kotturuh shifted in the chair, amusement in its sonorous voice. ‘And yet, what else is there in your life besides killing and death?’
The Ninth Doctor fell silent.
The Kotturuh regarded them both. ‘I see one who preys on life, and one who has brought about the death of worlds, and my own species.’ The tentacles folded in across the being’s chest. ‘It is fitting that you should end me.’
‘What? No!’ The Doctor shook his head. ‘No, I just want to talk!’
‘Talk?’ said the old being. ‘I find that unlikely.’
The Doctor paused, sucking his lip.
The Kotturuh looked at Ikalla. ‘What is he doing?’
‘He is working out a way of winning you over,’ confided Madam Ikalla.
‘I can’t when you do that!’ The Doctor groaned. ‘Listen to me – out there, the universe is falling apart. Yes, your species is ending, but I’m trying to help the last survivors. You can tell that, can’t you?’
The Kotturuh stretched out her tentacles, and they seemed to drift in the breeze. ‘You are too late.’
‘What?’
‘My people are dead,’ she said. ‘And good riddance.’
The Tenth Doctor and the Bloodsman were on a gantry. The chamber was vast, and showed signs of being converted from a storage bay for scout ships. It was filled with the body of a creature that rooted the two observers to the spot. While Gelsin sank to his knees in horrified awe the Doctor was fighting to clear his head.
He had never been this close to a Great Vampire.
The creature didn’t just fill the hold, it also crammed itself into his mind. A vast gargoyle, its bone-grey flesh was bloated like a blood-sucking tick. The creature was pinioned by energy beams that bored through and cauterised its limbs. A Dalek Scientist hovered over its open ribcage, a variety of medical probes whirring and drilling into the stinking mass. The Great Vampire’s head, twisted aside, glowered down at the Dalek Strategist that was surveying it.
‘It shows resilience,’ the Strategist remarked.
The Scientist’s eyestalk bobbed. ‘It has a high pain threshold. An examination of its central cavity reveals commendable efficiency. There are no redundant organs. It exists simply to feed and control.’
‘Feed and control,’ the Strategist repeated. It adjusted a dial and the energy beams intensified. The Great Vampire tried to shift, but could not, beyond fixing the Strategist with an intense glare of hatred. The Strategist modified the controls, broadening the beams until the Vampire let out a shriek of agony.
‘Your analysis is correct,’ the Strategist concluded, turning to the Scientist. ‘This specimen is as resilient as you predicted.’ There was the merest hint in its words that the consequences for the Scientist would have been bad otherwise.
>
The Scientist glided away, leaving the controls at their high setting.
‘Extract material and prepare a Dalek for experimentation,’ the Strategist ordered. ‘This will make the basis of an excellent Symbiont.’
The Tenth Doctor stared in horror.
In the biodome, the Ninth Doctor was making small talk.
‘My name’s the Doctor,’ he said. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Inyit,’ said the Kotturuh.
‘What did you mean when you said you were the last?’
Inyit levered herself out of her chair, and began a slow and painful crawl around her laboratory. ‘I long ago sensed our path being extinguished before its final completion, which is why I returned here. To the first planet our species judged.’
She pointed to the desolation outside the biodome.
‘Doesn’t look like it went well,’ the Doctor said.
‘It was our first terrible mistake. I was curious,’ said Inyit. ‘I wished to withdraw myself from my species. I felt … uncertain that what we were doing was correct. Our duty was a solemn one. We believe ourselves charged with it by the Ruler of the Universes.’
‘Plural?’
‘Of course. We move from one creation to the next. All life is born immortal, and we weigh every life form, calculate its worth, assign them a span. We adjust existence to produce the most perfect, most balanced universe.’
‘Really?’
‘So the story goes,’ Inyit turned her cowl towards Madam Ikalla. ‘And yet – there are anomalies. The vampires.’
‘Us?’ Madam Ikalla drew herself up to her haughtiest height.
‘You,’ the Kotturuh sighed. ‘Your simple presence chills me. I mean no offence. It is innate to our species. There is something about you that does not fit. It was the vampires that made me begin to question our great purpose.’
‘You should feel honoured,’ the Ninth Doctor said, but Madam Inyit merely frowned.
‘If all life remained immortal, then what would be the attraction of becoming a vampire? It is as if by passing on our gift, we are enabling you.’
‘Then why not kill us?’ sneered Ikalla.
‘Because you are not life. You are … something else.’ Inyit paused, leaning against a bench, and gently sorting through the leaves of a tree seedling. ‘We considered ourselves akin to you – the divine opposite of you – and yet, when our gift was turned against us, no help came. We simply died. As I always knew we would.’
Doctor Who Page 7
